Social Media News

A business story in my local newspaper yesterday reported that Facebook has overtaken MySpace in the number of users for the first time since it was founded five years ago. Facebook users totaled 70,280,000 in May; MySpace users totaled 70,250,000.

Perhaps this was not unexpected. MySpace has grown increasingly stodgy, while Facebook offers more interactive features that allows people to interact more freely. That is, when it works. (I've had my problems with Facebook, but as of now I can say that they've since been fixed for good.)

While Facebook offers immediate information and easier interaction for its users, MySpace tried to offer more entertainment content - music downloads, movie previews - that people simply didn't care about. Right now there's a trailer for Sandra Bullock's latest movie, and while I like Sandra Bullock (and will probably like The Proposal, if I get around to seeing it), that's not what I go to social networking sites for. I go to them to communicate with my friends.

That's why I go to Facebook more than anywhere else. I can spend up to thirty minutes at a time there; I'm on MySpace for only a couple of minutes at a time. Most of the people I know in my writers' group are there; by contrast, only one of them is a MySpace friend, and I haven't heard from her in months. (This friend also has a Facebook account.) Several other MySpace friends haven't visited their own sites for weeks, sometimes months; they're too busy congregating on Facebook because it's easier. I communicate with friends of mine with both MySpace and Facebook accounts more often on Facebook, which more people take more seriously.

As for MySpace, no one seems to take that seriously anymore. Statuses and moods haven't been updated on many of my friends's pages for months. Statuses on Facebook, by the way, disappear after a week. Someone who says he's happy on MySpace - because that's what he wrote in March - might be miserable now. If he hasn't updated his Facebook page in over a week, you have no idea how he is.

Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corporation bought MySpace in 2006 and was hailed as a visionary for getting a piece of the Internet social networking action - now looks like a square who can't keep up with the times. Murdoch has vowed to get MySpace - which had to lay off a third of its 1200 or so employees - back on top, but that objective is in doubt. In the brief history of Internet social networking sites, such sites tend to be forgotten once they lose momentum. Friendster, for example, is like a bland sitcom that's been on the air for a decade; no one knows it's there. As I previously noted, I know a married couple who met through Friendster, and they're grateful to it for having found each other. But a married couple having met through Friendster sounds as hip these days as a married couple having met through a Catholic Youth Organization dance.

MySpace may not go the way of CYO dances, but just the fact that they're capable of going the way of Friendster must be frightening to Murdoch and to Tom Anderson, a co-founder of MySpace who immediately becomes your first friend when you sign on. (That might be another reason MySpace is in trouble; becoming friends with one of its leaders automatically might seem creepy to some.) Social networking sites tend to have their moments in the sun, but the ones that succeed stay ahead of the curve. Those that don't do so lose their edge with little hope of regaining it. That's just as true in other businesses - look at all the American and European auto companies still reeling from loss of market share to the Japanese. And, just as GM never quite regained an advantage over Toyota, the evidence of history suggests that MySpace isn't likely to get back its edge over Facebook.

Nevertheless, I plan to keep my MySpace page. Its format is like that of a real Web site, and I use it to promote myself to the outside world; my Facebook page is private. Plus, I love putting up a new music video on my MySpace page every week for people to see; the only way you can keep something up on a Facebook page for a week or longer is to not post anything for awhile. (I inform people of my latest MySpace "Music Video Of the Week" through - you guessed it - Facebook.) These small features might just keep MySpace in the running, if only as an also-ran.

Unlike Friendster, which is just plain out of contention.

Trojan Horses

Are social networking sites overrated?

Forget the horror stories about people who got involved with MySpace or Craigslist. Episodes of that nature have gone on in one way or another for years, mostly without help from the Internet. Leaving the tales of the dangers of social networking sites aside for the sake of this post, I ask this - are social networking sites all that wonderful?

I've met a couple of people through the Internet - I met one friend through Flickr, in fact, if Flickr counts as a social networking site - but most of the people I connect with through MySpace or Facebook are folks I know in the real, non-cyberspace world. I prefer the actual company of people rather than the virtual one - that's why I made the eleven MySpace friends of mine that I have met and know in person my top eleven friends. More often than not, social networking sites are sites for me to go to in order to keep up my "real world" friendships.

I've tried meeting new people through MySpace, for example, but it doesn't usually work out. Case in point: One of my MySpace friends celebrated her birthday this past Monday. I had been trying to meet this woman in person for some time, because she sounds interesting. Anyway, I seized the occasion of her birthday to leave her a comment on her page wishing her a happy birthday, as a friendly gesture. But, because all comments left on this woman's page requires her approval before they're added to her comments page, it wouldn't appear until she looked at it and approved it.

It hasn't appeared at all. She has logged in to her MySpace page since Monday, but she didn't bother to post the comment I left her.

Come to think of it, she rarely approves any of the comments I've left for her photos as well.

So, I tried to meet someone and be nice and friendly and all that, and it didn't happen.

Oh yeah, I have 67 MySpace friends at this posting, and I'm in regular contact with no more than a few of them at a time. There are some MySpace "friends" I am in no contact with at all.

So, given all that, why do I have so many MySpace friends, especially when most of them are friends in name only?

I'm seriously considering dropping a lot of my MySpace friends (including the woman I just mentioned) for the same reason General Motors dropped so many brands - they're superfluous. If I want to meet anyone that badly, I'll do it the old-fashioned way - go to a bar. As for my MySpace page, well, it makes a good personal Web site, and I enjoy posting a different music video on it each week.

More of my Facebook friends, by contrast, are people I know in the real world, so that works out better, especially now that all of the bugs that affected my Facebook screen - part of it was truncated - have been worked out. I don't know about Friendster, though; I tried opening mail on that site and a Trojan virus hijacked my PC and it took me all afternoon to remove it.

Ironically, the chap who introduced me to Friendster met his wife through it.

Me, I get a Trojan from it.

And don't even get me started on Twitter, which I rarely use.